‘Boris Johnson’s latest outburst has Theresa May’s Brexit tank flying a white flag while losing a wrestling match after being locked in a car boot as it cherry-picks a magnetic field.’
Photograph: Thierry Charlier/AP

Never trust a man who can’t master his metaphors. Boris Johnson’s latest outburst has Theresa May’s Brexit tank flying a white flag while losing a wrestling match after being locked in a car boot as it cherrypicks a magnetic field. Is this the scrambled mind that reportedly called the Chequers deal a triumph a month ago – before deciding that writing Telegraph columns was easier than politics. On that point, Johnson was right.

There were good reasons for Britain to leave the European Union. They were largely to do with the future politics of an outer ring of non-eurozone nations. They were nothing to do with the single market, championed as a majestic edifice of free trade by the Brexiter’s darling, Margaret Thatcher, some 30 years ago.

Brexit not about personality politics, Tories warn Johnson

Read more

The only argument Johnson deploys for rejecting Chequers is that it would be ruling out “major trade deals with the rest of the world”. By no remote stretch of the statistics could these deals compensate for the 60% of UK trade that is conducted either with or through the EU. This includes 40 deals with the rest of the world that would have to be renegotiated if the UK leaves the customs union. This is not a policy. It is mad.

Johnson likewise ridicules the idea that the Irish border is an “issue”, since only 1.6% of Irish exports go to Northern Ireland. This is mendacious. Ireland sends 13.5% of its export to the UK, while most Irish exports pass through UK ports and would need monitoring. Yet Johnson wants EU tariffs imposed by “spot-checks at warehouses and points of sale”, a solution he would extend to Dover and presumably other borders. It is odd how two years of talks have failed to appreciate the genius of this Heath Robinson scheme.

Play Video

7:31

Is Brexit definitely going to happen? – video explainer

The Chequers deal is not “humiliating” or surrender or a scandal. It is a desperate effort to rescue Britain’s trade in goods and (some) services from chaos. It resulted from May’s dire decision, under pressure from Johnson and others, to interpret Brexit as a vote against remaining within Europe’s “economic space”. Just 9% of leave voters cited trade as their main reason for voting Brexit. They wanted to escape the political nexus of Brussels, and they wanted new curbs on immigration. That is what May should be discussing in Brussels. “Making our own deals” is an infantile irrelevance.

Johnson claims to want Britain as a “proud independent economic actor”. Surely it was that under his hero, Thatcher, when she revolutionised its economy within the EU? He says he still wants a “free trade deal with intimate partnerships” with Europe. But that is Chequers, and it requires customs and regulatory convergence. All trade is built on rules. As for the rest of the world, the Germans and the French still negotiate deals with Asia and Africa, as does the UK.

This whole argument is allegedly one on which all Britain’s politics now turns. It is bogus. It is the worst basis on which to stage a Tory leadership challenge.